Blog News

On October 18, the data center where I maintain my server will be undergoing scheduled maintenance. The websites hosted on my server might experience server interruptions for up to 6 hours.

The Madd Medic over at Freedom is Just Another Word is having open heart surgery this week so I would like to ask all of you to wish him and his family all the best.

I usually toss comments that resort to insults directly into the circular file. Reader AZFloyd made a comment that I really want to respond to. AZFloyd’s comments are italicized, mine follow in red. So here goes:

No disrespect. A boomer who has finally figured out that cops are not on our side should be applauded. But, You don’t get it Boomer.

First, a boomer refers to a baby boomer, those born between 1946 and 1964. I am not a boomer, so you miss the mark there. You did intend to disrespect me, but reading the rest of your comment, I understand why. Even so, I get more about your situation than you know.

Many of of live hand to mouth. We already lost everything. We don’t bitch about property taxes because we don’t have any property. We don’t whine in the internet about our troubles with passive income because we have no income. A civil war might makes us truly equal. I don’t think you have any idea how many white men have been thrown into this oblivion. If you did, you would retire so a young white man could have your job. But you still have to make your wife happy instead of looking out for your posterity. You are part of the problem.

That’s because you would rather sit on your ass in your mother’s living room, wait for someone to retire or quit, so maybe as the last man on earth, you could get their job. That isn’t how the world works. You have to compete, and no one is going to give you shit. I know more about poverty, picking yourself up, and going out there to get a job than you will ever know, champ. Instead of sitting around complaining about how old white guys are stealing your future employment, why don’t you go out there and make yourself more employable?

Tell you what, throw away your permission slip to earn a living (Inlost my law license) throw away you house, the Chinese made crap it is full off. Ditch the wife, the cars, everything. Everything! Then figure out how to survive. After you spent a few brain cycles looking for a place to deficate instead of self actualization, we can talk.

I did that already. I have been homeless, twice. Instead of going on line to bitch about it, I went to school, got a better job, and now I get to listen to little immature assholes complain about how I am stealing a job from your unemployed, worthless ass. I also don’t believe for a second that you had a law license. In fact, your IP indicates that you are in Seattle, not AZ.

At least in a war, I can fight. Truly fight. Sir, I am not trying to disparage you. But you obviously have no idea about the degree of misery going on out here.

You could fight, but you won’t. Instead, you will sit behind your computer and complain that old white dudes aren’t doing your fighting for you. Why don’t you try to learn how to do something other than whine? It takes three years to become a registered nurse, and they are in such short supply that many hospitals are paying $20,000 sign on bonuses for licensed nurses.

Saysuncle used to be a daily read for me. He began blogging shortly after he got married in 2002. He was a prolific poster, often posting a dozen or more times a day. Sadly, his wife passed away in March of 2020. The frequency of his blogging fell off shortly after, and he eventually stopped posting. A year after his wife died, his house burned to the ground and was a total loss. That’s a tough run of bad times, there. I hope things have improved for him.

Tam over at Books, Bikes, and Boomsticks was also a daily read. Then she went and got herself a job as a professional writer, and her blog quality fell sharply. AFAIK, she still posts, but I stopped reading her stuff a couple of years ago. I do miss her snark.

There are many others: The Ambulance Driver, Munchkin Wrangler, and a few others. I just can’t think of them all at this point.

This blog is now 16 years old, and I began blogging because of them. I walk in the footsteps of giants.

I just upgraded the server here. Things should be a bit faster. In total, we are seeing about 14,000 visitors a day. This blog alone is getting about 6,000 of those. The extra traffic was causing a bit of a slowdown, so we did a few upgrades. More memory, a different set of IP’s, and a larger CPU. If you people keep wanting to share my server, I will just expand again.

Keep helping us preserve the First Amendment.

Whenever you don’t give 100% fawning support to cops no matter what they do or say, the cops and their hangers on will accuse you of “hating cops.”

Whenever you don’t run around screaming ACAB and hating on all cops, those who do hate them will accuse you of being a jackboot or a boot licker.

In reality, there is a middle ground. I don’t hate all cops, I hate shitty, cowardly, or crooked cops. Some examples:

• cops who use their positions in order to get away with committing crimes
• cops who take sides and help some criminals break the law while arresting others for the exact same crime
• cops who are cowards, for example- “taking cover” behind soccer moms or hiding when children are being slaughtered just yards away
• cops who abuse their power to bully and harass citizens
• cops who know about other cops behaving like those above, but are either staying silent about it, are actively covering for them or are harassing cops that are brave enough to take a stand. Cops call this “professional courtesy” but most people call it “accessory to a crime” or “witness tampering.”

Each and every one of the above is an example of a “bad cop” and covers about 90% of them. OTOH, that doesn’t mean that I support criminals- quite the opposite. I am opposed to criminals whether or not they wear a uniform and a badge. See, each of the above examples is a crime and if cops want to be “good cops” they can start by policing their own ranks.

To the cop haters who think ACAB and are not needed: There are criminals out there. SOMEONE has to not only catch criminals, but needs to protect the rights of those criminals to due process. If there isn’t such a class of people, you get mob rule, vigilantism, and all of our rights are subject to the lynch mob. In other words, you get social credit scores, along with Twitter and Facebook style justice.

So here is my invitation to people on both sides of the debate: I am inviting one cop supporter and one cop opponent to submit posts for my consideration. I will select one post from each side of the debate for publication on this blog. This is the very first time that I have considered allowing anyone else to write a post for this blog. Explain to me how I am not being fair to your side and how I have it all wrong. Here are the rules:

• Your post must be a minimum of 250 words, maximum of 600 words.
• It cannot contain ads or attempt to sell anything.
• It cannot contain personal attacks against individuals.
• Pay attention to spelling and grammar. If the post is filled with errors, you just look stupid.
• Examples that support your argument look better if you link to your source.
• Your post can’t advocate for committing illegal acts.
• I am the sole judge of what gets published on this blog, but your opinions remain your own, even if you and I disagree. I may suggest edits. If you don’t agree to making those edits, I won’t put words in your mouth. If you refuse those suggested edits, I may decide not to publish your post at all, but I won’t make the edits without your approval.
• All posts submitted remain the property of the LLC that publishes this blog, and that LLC retains all rights to those submissions.

This is your chance to have your say. Prove that I am wrong. If you are cool with those edits, submit your posts by email to divemedic (at) areaocho.com. All submissions are due by Tuesday, September 19 at 11:59 pm. The winners will be picked the following day.

I am getting tons of spam users registering for accounts but never posting any comments. If you have registered for an account and have not yet commented, please comment to this post. That is how I will know who is and isn’t a spam account.

Any registered users that have not posted a single comment by Monday will be purged from the site. If you DO get purged, you can reregister.

I don’t typically concern myself with hurricanes unless they are Category three or higher. The reason being that I am more than 50 miles from either coast, and hurricane damage with smaller storms is pretty much restricted to a mile or two of the ocean. Honestly, Florida gets thunderstorms every afternoon in the summer, and they often have winds of tropical storm strength. This far inland, it just isn’t a problem unless you live in a flood prone area or a mobile home, which I do not.

With that being said, the forecast on Sunday night isn’t looking good, and it looks like this hurricane will be a Cat 3 when I arrives in a couple of days. I spent Sunday before bed picking up all of the outdoor stuff. I am working for the next few days, so the wife is on her own.

At the hospital, we clear out a section of the hospital normally reserved for elective surgeries, and make it into a dorm of sorts for the staff who must work during the storm. That’s where I will be staying for the next three days. There may or may not be any posting. I have a couple on deck that I have already written, and they will likely be the only posts for the time being.

Quite a few people have been asking me in comments and by email for a list of the blogs that I host. I can’t do that unless the blog owners themselves are willing. Confidentiality is another service that I offer. I will let them do so themselves.

After all, word of mouth is the only thing I have for letting people know that I am willing to host.

Ever since moving to my own server, this blog’s visibility has skyrocketed. I am getting 4500 unique visitors a day- over 1.4 million hits in the last year. Big Country is even busier than I am, if my resource counters are any guide. I can’t see how many hits he gets, but his disk access and I/O usage is awesome.

The blogs that I am hosting are actually touching on 100% of available I/O and memory resources. We aren’t running short on disk space, it’s processing that is getting close to max. I may have to add some processing power. The seven blogs that are hosted here are surprisingly popular.

That’s the goal- free speech.